Friday, January 14, 2011

Blu-Ray Trilogy Extended Edition Coming

Digital Bits is reporting that Warner Bros is prepping the Blu-ray extended edition for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The regular edition was released earlier this year and not really a surprise that they are following up with the extended edition even though probably annoying for those (like me) that didn't want to wait a year.

What's more, our sources are NOW telling us that WHV (and their now in-house New Line label) is ALSO planning to release Peter Jackson's long-awaited The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Extended Editions on Blu-ray sometime this year. No kidding. We suspect that, now that The Hobbit films are finally about to begin filming, the studio is eager to get more product on store shelves to keep the franchise fresh in the minds of fans. The Extended Rings films on BD are the obvious choice for this year. Farther down the line, of course, there will be the obvious Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D versions of The Hobbit films, and sooner or later an "ultimate" box set of all the films with all new extras custom created by Jackson. Anyway, our sources tell us to expect some kind of official news on all this (re: Rings: Extended and Kubrick) from the studio in the next several weeks.

The One Ring is saying there is a strong possibility that to retain quality of the 1080p transfer, the films will have be split into two discs just like the DVD extended edition was. It was also noted that for a while now there have been rumors that Peter Jackson has been sitting on more extra features for an "Ultimate Edition" of the Middle Earth story that will likely be a combination of all five films in one edition.